Our last week

judy

Jim arrived on Thursday after an uneventful day of travel. He visited Sarah's school and went to class with me. The three of us together after six weeks of separation was cause for celebration. Jim and I had dinner at Las Ma\241anitas, one of the most famous restaurants in the world. The next day we took a trip to Las Estacas, a beautiful spring fed river where we snorkled among guppies, swordtails and fresh water lobsters.

We left Cuernavaca to travel to Oaxaca. Here we played tourists. We visted indigenous ruins at two sites, Monte Alban and Mitla. Monte Alban was started over 2500 years ago when the Zapotecs literally leveled off the top of a moountain to construct their temples, ball courts, an observatory and living areas. We took side trips on both days to observe wool weaving with natural dies, pottery making by the son of Do\241a Rosa, the inventor of the shiny black pots we saw made in one of the movies I showed you. In fact, we saw Don Valente, the same person we saw demonstrate the pottery method in our movie. We also saw the traditional wood carving of Oaxaca and Sarah got to paint with the young ladies painting the fantastic creatures. We bought souveniers from each place. Today we took an exciting boat trip up a steamy jungle river here in Chiapas state. (The southern most state of Mexico.) We saw beautiful waterfalls, birds and several crocodiles. We will post pictures in a few weeks as we decided to leave our laptop in Cuernavaca in order to travel 'light' (although Jim probably doesn't think we are traveling light!) \161Hasta luego!

Sarah

Today I met three Chamula indan girls. Their names were Maruch, 11, Luchina, 10, and Pashcu, 9. When we first saw them the older girls were washing the younger girls hair and braiding and combing it. They stopped to try to sell us hand woven braclets and belts. They offered for us to take pictures of them for 10 pasos because they were wearing the native dress and no one else would let us take pictures because they thought it would take away their soul.They giggled a lot and played with each other. It was awkward at first but after talking with them it was fun.